Japan had a unique system that supported its high postwar economic growth. The husband worked hard at the company and earned a lot of income. Meanwhile, the wife was responsible for taking care of the home, raising children well, and caring for grandparents in old age. Seeing this success, the government switched the wife’s pension from the voluntary National Pension to a compulsory and free National Pension. In simple terms, if the wife works too much, taxes and insurance premiums will increase and her real income will decrease. This system was good in the past. It has now become a bad system that causes a loss of valuable labor and creates an economic disparity between men and women.
The labor force participation rate of Japanese women is M-shaped. When they start working, they show high productivity, but there are cases that they leave their jobs due to circumstances such as marriage, child-rearing, and caring for their parents. Then their productivity drops. Then, once the family situation has settled down, women start working in their late 30s to 40s, and their productivity rises again, forming an M-shaped curve. In the past, women in France also quit work to raise children, and the labor force participation rate formed an M-shaped curve. However, in the 1980s, the M-shaped curve of the labor force participation rate disappeared. A major feature of the franc is that women can continue working even after giving birth to children. This feature is supported by various leave systems. The example of France shows that it is not impossible to balance work and child-rearing if the environment is right.
There is a trend in companies around the world to make use of women’s abilities. Google provided employees with free cooking and laundry services in the office. Google has determined that the most valuable resource is its talented employees. It seems that they have a philosophy that the time of talented employees should not be wasted. Japan has long formed a male-dominated work environment. However, recently, women’s purchasing power has also been rapidly increasing. Women understand women best. In many cases, the flow is from a woman’s proposal through a male supervisor, to the development, manufacture, and sale of the product that women want. It would be more rational to build a flow from a woman’s proposal through a female supervisor, to the development, manufacture, and sale of the product that women want. Companies that value women’s abilities are beginning to appear in Japanese companies as well. I would like to see this flow become a bigger trend.
